Nick Clements

Nick Clements

George N. (Nick) Clements (October 5, 1940 – August 30, 2009) was an American theoretical linguist specializing in phonology. Clements was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and educated in New Haven, Paris and London. He received his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 1973, defending a thesis on the Ewe language based on a year of field work in Ghana. He was a visiting scientist at M.I.T. (1973–75) and held appointments as professor at Harvard (1975–82) and Cornell (1982–91) before moving to the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.) in Paris in 1992. He died of cancer in Chatham, Massachusetts, at the age of 68.

Clements' main research was in phonology with a special focus on African languages. He is best known for his research in syllable theory, tone and feature theory which have contributed to the modern theory of sound patterning in spoken language. At the time of his death, his work was concerned with the principles underlying speech sound inventories across languages.